Posted
by
samzenpus
on Thursday June 26, 2014 @09:06PM
from the first-step dept.

An anonymous reader writes The spacecraft it is hoped will take man to Mars has passed its first parachute tests. Nasa's Orion spacecraft landed gently using its parachutes after being shoved out of a military jet at 35,000 feet. "We've put the parachutes through their paces in ground and airdrop testing in just about every conceivable way before we begin sending them into space on Exploration Flight Test (EFT)-1 before the year's done," Orion program manager Mark Geyer said in a NASA statement. "The series of tests has proven the system and will help ensure crew and mission safety for our astronauts in the future."

There is no one-size fits all capsule and although the Dragon could be modified to work for deep space missions as this has been taken into account from the start, it isn't currently built for that.

Agreed. The Dragon seems to be just a 7-passenger taxi service to the ISS. However, you could probably dock it to another space station too, one with living quarters, a Mars-lander and a bunch of big engines and fuel tanks, and then you have your Mars mission complete.

Absolutely not. If you're going to go with a nuclear rocket, make it a gas core nuclear rocket, like the Liberty. Gas core nuclear rockets (or nuclear light bulbs) do not spew radioactive waste in their wake. They are clean and physically doable, unlike the Orion.

In my more conspiracy-minded moments I sometimes wonder if the name choice wasn't deliberate, to make the public forget about the original Project Orion. There was no need to name this abortion 'Orion' when that name had already been used for an entirely different concept in manned space flight. This one should have been called Apollo Command Module Version 2, because that's pretty much all it is.

As I understand it, Orion is sort of the equivalent of the Apollo CM. It was not cancelled.

However, what I believe the administration wants to cancel is part of the SLS (Shuttle Launch System) which would lift the Orion capsule into orbit--sort of the equivalent of the Saturn 1B that was used to launch Apollo capsules into earth orbit for Skylab and Apollo/Soyuz missions.

I believe the heavy-lift version of SLS--sort of analogous to the Saturn 5--is still funded for the asteroid missions.

It is very likely that the Dragon capsule will carry astronauts before Orion, but SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada, et. al. are only going to LEO, Orion is being developed for long duration deep space travel. Moon, asteroids, Mars perhaps.

Bear in mind that Musk's goal is long-duration deep space travel, so it still may be possible that SpaceX will still get there before Orion gets off the ground, especially if his successes in Earth orbit make it easier to continue development past it.

SpaceX capsule is for LEO. They would need to build something else for further out. Orion is for further out. They will not use Orion to get to space station. They will use Orion for other missions.

SpaceX is the contractor for LEO stuff and will remain so and it will be quite lucrative for them and for NASA. NASA needs contracts like SpaceX for things like orbiting fuel depot which will use quite a lot of cheap rockets, which fits perfectly with SpaceX's reusable rocket idea.

Yes, I understand what Dragon is for, and what they're contracted to do for NASA.

They themselves have the goal of going beyond that. Dragon, Falcon, and the other low-earth projects are stepping stones toward proving technologies needed for going further. Sure, there's a lot of tech that they'd need that won't be developed by Dragon/Falcon, but a whole lot of support and control systems can be tested where there's low risk (ie, unmanned missions or once manned, where actually occupied for only a short

Which is why this project should just be canceled. There are private companies working on this. We don't have the USG competing with Intel, "just in case" they don't beat Moore's law. There's not compelling national security interest in putting a man on Mars - the whole program should just be defunded and let the companies work out how to do it. Return the money to the taxpayers, pay for some more healthcare, or whatever - the first step is realizing that the NASA model is not required in this case.

Yes I agree. I'm also happy that NASA is making progress on this. I think it's a worthwhile endeavor, even if it is tied to earmarks and corporate welfare, much moreso than SpaceX's lucrative NASA contracts.

I also am excited at what SpaceX is doing. They are certainly the farthest along, and most likely to succeed in the near term. Who knows. Maybe in the future if SpaceX is the only American company visiting the space station and hauling astronauts, they could just take over space station operations an

Even with a nuclear powered rocket, interstellar travel to the nearest neighbour will take more than a century, and that's just for a high speed fly-by. If you actually want to get in orbit, it'll take twice as long.

Not true. It is Obama who tried to kill planetary science such as Mars missions and gut unmanned missions to fund the pork-y manned missions. There has never been a Administration that has been this hostile to unmanned missions.

Yeah, but your facts don't play with AC's narrative that each and every Republican is a bible-thumping science-denying women-hating redneck gun-waving racist who wants to fire you and your family in order to throw another nickel into the olympic swimming pool filled with cash.

Just smile and nod, even if the smile is just a thinly veiled wince. And don't even think about explaining that the Democratic party has it's own extremist flank of tree-hugging tax-and-spend politically-correct welfare-state socialis

Orion is not going to take man to Mars. It's way too small to deal with the enormous life support requirements for a journey to Mars.

Despite SpaceX and Nasa enthusiasm for a Mars trip the reality is we are at least several decades away from a manned Mars mission. Two way is unlikely any time soon because of cost. One could build a ship big enough for the mission in earth orbit but a big ship would probably need fuel to slow down as it approaches Mars. Aerobraking a large ship into Mars orbit is magnitudes

Once we have the ability to actually get to Mars with assurance to actually carry out the mission at all, getting back will be trivial. There's no need for a one way mission, and no ability to do a sustained base on the first try.

Here's the good thing about NASA's hardware: it usually has a docking port. Orion might be small, but so was the Apollo Command Module. However, once in orbit, you can rendezvous with something else that is already up there (or launched on the same rocket stack if you want to go 1960s mega-rocket) that has the supplies necessary for the journey, landing and stay. Then, when they blast off the surface of Mars, they rendezvous with another remote-controlled spacecraft following behind that is in Mars orbi

That depends on 5 main factors:air density (depends on altitude)aerodynamic shape of the objectFrontal surface of the objectMass of the objectThe gravitational acceleration on Mars (approx 4 m/s^2)

If I assume the air pressure of 1% of earth means that the density is also 1% then:p=0.1225 kg/m3.If I assume a C of 1 (approximately a man facing the planet, see here [wikipedia.org] for more common C's), an A of 1m^2 and a m of 100kg

For Immediate Release
Hundreds of dignitaries gathered on Wednesday at the Lockheed Martin Space Systems Plant in Littleton CO for the installation of screw 112-454.B in NASA's latest emerging spacecraft the Orion Test Article. Vice President Biden was on hand to celebrate this important milestone on America's return to space..
"We salute the hard work of hundreds of thousands of American's from every state in the union for their efforts in ensuring the successful installation of screw 112-454.B. They rep